Greetings! It’s good to have you with us as we continue our study of the book of Acts today.A False Accusation— You know, I don’t know if you have ever had somebody try to malign your name before. As a pastor, I have been on the receiving end of that a number of times; and it is painful. And usually that kind of behavior comes from somebody who misunderstands you or something you have done or something you are trying to do. And so they speak against you. And that kind of abuse can be...
Greetings! It’s good to have you with us as we continue our study of the book of Acts today.
A False Accusation— You know, I don’t know if you have ever had somebody try to malign your name before. As a pastor, I have been on the receiving end of that a number of times; and it is painful. And usually that kind of behavior comes from somebody who misunderstands you or something you have done or something you are trying to do. And so they speak against you. And that kind of abuse can be hard to take. Now it is one thing when you are dealing with somebody who is honestly mistaken and quite another when you are dealing with somebody who maligns your name knowing that what they were saying against you was false. Well, that is very much the situation we find here in chapters 22-23 of the book of Acts, as Paul is viciously accused by a group of Judaizers who stir up a mob to attack and beat him. Now he is saved by the commander of the Roman troops (a man by the name of Claudius Lysias), who takes him into custody, brings him into the barracks, asks him if he is a particular murderous criminal, hears Paul explain to him who he really is, and then allows Paul to address the crowd, which he then does. And the crowd listens up until Paul says that the Lord had sent him to minister unto Gentiles. At they point the crowd loses it and Lysias again takes him into the barracks; and this time prepares to scourge Paul until he finds out why the crowd is shouting like this against him. But then Paul reveals that he is a Roman citizen. And that shocks Lysias and the other soldiers; because it meant that they had overstepped their bounds in even binding Paul at all. And so Lysias decides to have Paul stand before the Sanhedrin, the Jewish supreme court of the land comprised of 71 members, including the high priest. And so Paul is brought before them in an unofficial meeting. And it says…
Acts 23:1-5 (ESV)— 1 And looking intently at the council, Paul said, “Brothers, I have lived my life before God in all good conscience up to this day.” 2 And the high priest Ananias commanded those who stood by him to strike him on the mouth. 3 Then Paul said to him, “God is going to strike you, you whitewashed wall! Are you sitting to judge me according to the law, and yet contrary to the law you order me to be struck?”
4 Those who stood by said, “Would you revile God's high priest?”
5 And Paul said, “I did not know, brothers, that he was the high priest, for it is written, ‘You shall not speak evil of a ruler of your people.’”
Paul’s Divinely Appointed Mistake— Now in admitting his mistake, Paul shows that he actually had more respect for the law than Ananias did. He acknowledged his mistake and immediately quoted the exact law of God (Exodus 22:28) that he had unwittingly broken. Now, as I said last week, I believe that although Paul may seem harsh here, he had not knowingly broken God’s law; because he had not recognized Ananias. It may be because Paul had eye problems (which Galatians 4:15 seems to indicate). It may be because none of the Sanhedrin were in official dress, because this was an informal meeting. It may also be because Ananias’ treatment of Paul was so unlawful that Paul never would have dreamed he would actually be the judge in that situation. We don’t know. But what seems to be the case regardless of why Paul didn’t recognize Ananias is that God was being this rebuke of Ananias by Paul. I think God allowed Paul to not recognize Ananias so that Paul could say exactly what needed to be said.
Hypocrites— And you know, what Paul said was very much in line with what Jesus Himself said about the religious leaders He encountered. In Matthew 23:15, He called the Pharisees “hypocrites”. And that was because they were actors. Actors during that time would wear these masks. And “hypocrite” meant (literally) to judge someone from behind one of those masks. And so Jesus was calling them out for being impersonators, frauds, and show-offs as opposed to true followers of God. They were pretending to be holy but it was all a show; just a mask that hid their true selves, which were polluted by sin.
Fitted For Hell— In Matthew 23:15, He referred to each Pharisee as being a "child of hell." He mentioned that the converts they thought they had won over to Judaism they in fact made even worse than them. He says: "twofold more the child of hell than yourselves." Yikes. And “child of hell" was a phrase Jesus took right from the Talmud; it [was a Hebraism for an excessively wicked person who might very easily claim Hell for his mother and the devil for his father. It was one who was fitted and destined for Hell.]
Blind, Fools, Tombs, Full of Sin, Snakes, & Murderers— [In Matthew 23:16, He called them - "blind guides.”… In Matthew 23:17, He called them - “fools." In Matthew 23:27, He called them - "whited sepulchres.”] And that was very similar to what Paul had here called Ananias (a “whitewashed wall). And what was behind Jesus’ calling them “whited sepulchres” was the fact that [On the fifteenth day of the month Adar - right before the Passover feast - the Jews would whitewash all the spots where the graves of the poor were situated in the fields or along the roadsides. They did this practice in order to beautify these graves or to alert the pilgrims to the areas where the dead lay. On their way to keeping the Feast of Passover, they did not want to be defiled through contact with the dead. {And so} Jesus referred to the Pharisees in this manner because - on the outside like the "whited sepulchres" they appeared pure and clean - but on the inside, they were filled with death.] He reiterates that in Matthew 23:28 when He tells them that they are "full of...iniquity." [In Matthew 23:33, He called them "serpents" and a "generation of vipers.”… And in in Matthew 23:34, He prophesied that they were - "murderers" - because they would "kill" the "prophets," "wise men," and "scribes" that He would send unto them.] And that (notably) was what they were here starting to do to Paul.
Not Going To Get A Fair Hearing— Now Paul, in witnessing firsthand Ananias’ haughty attitude and flagrant disregard for the Law in commanding that he be brutally and illegally struck realizes (though perhaps he already knew) that he was not going to receive a fair hearing before the Sanhedrin. And so he decides on a very bold and ingenious strategy; one that shows he was very well aware of the tensions between the Sanhedrin’s two factions: the Pharisees and Sadducees.
A Former Sanhedrin Member?— And I do want to add that this may be because he himself might have been a member of the Sanhedrin back before he became a Christian. We see some indication of this in chapter 26, where we find him giving his defense before Herod Agrippa; because he says I not only locked up many of the saints in prison after receiving authority from the chief priests, but when they were put to death I cast my vote against them. Now the literal translation of “I cast my vote” is “I threw my pebble”, which is in [reference to the ancient custom of recording votes by means of colored pebbles.] Well, with whom was Paul voting? Well, very likely the Sanhedrin. Now whether or not that is the case, he knows of their internal tensions, which is why he opts for the strategy that he does. It says in…
Acts 23:6-9 (ESV)— 6 Now when Paul perceived that one part were Sadducees and the other Pharisees, he cried out in the council, “Brothers, I am a Pharisee, a son of Pharisees. It is with respect to the hope and the resurrection of the dead that I am on trial.” 7 And when he had said this, a dissension arose between the Pharisees and the Sadducees, and the assembly was divided. 8 For the Sadducees say that there is no resurrection, nor angel, nor spirit, but the Pharisees acknowledge them all. 9 Then a great clamor arose, and some of the scribes of the Pharisees' party stood up and contended sharply, “We find nothing wrong in this man. What if a spirit or an angel spoke to him?”
The Tide Turns— Now this is quite an extraordinary turn of events. Paul now has a large number of men in the Sanhedrin advocating on his behalf. It truly was a genius move. But what is important for us to realize is that all this wasn’t just some little ploy instigated by Paul to cause a division on some minor point of theology. No, the resurrection of Christ from the dead was (and still is) the central theme of Christianity. The Pharisees believed in a resurrection and an afterlife, but the Sadducees didn’t. And since the high priest and his family were all Sadducees, I simply can’t get over that the fact that the highest spiritual leaders in Israel did not even believe in an afterlife. That just blows my mind. But, you know, that explains why their focus was always on the dangers in the here and now; they never thought from an eternal perspective because they didn’t believe they would survive on into eternity. Some have quipped that that is why they were “sad, you see”. The Pharisees, however, were much closer to the teaching of Christianity, which is why we do read accounts in scripture of some of them being converted (Acts 15:5 and John 3:1). But scripture does not give us a record of a single Sadducee ever coming to faith in Jesus Christ. And that truly is a sad reality. Now what is amazing to me about the next verse is how violent all these supposedly God-fearing men get, to the point where is says in the next verse…
Acts 23:10 (ESV)— 10 And when the dissension became violent, the tribune, afraid that Paul would be torn to pieces by them, commanded the soldiers to go down and take him away from among them by force and bring him into the barracks.
A Discouraging Time— Now Paul is no doubt glad to have gotten out of that scrape (by the grace of God). But imagine how discourage he must have felt and the hardness of heart and even the injustice he had experienced in regard to these men that (years prior) he would have looked up to. You know, as I read this, I wonder what it would be like if all my college Bible and seminary teachers came out and denounced me as a heretic and felt it fit that I be killed. I mean, I would be in a bad place. But I love how God always meets us in those low spots and gives us the strength and encouragement we need, which he does here with Paul. It says in…
Acts 23:11 (ESV)— 11 The following night the Lord stood by him and said, “Take courage, for as you have testified to the facts about me in Jerusalem, so you must testify also in Rome.”
The Lord Stood By Him— Now the phrase we need to grasp and hold onto this week is in the first part of this final verse: “the Lord stood by him ”. Jesus stood for Paul because Paul was standing for Him. That is a theme we find over and over again in and throughout scripture. When you and I are faithful to be a voice for Christ, He will also be faithful to stand with us and (in due time) bring the evil our enemies devise for us on their own heads. They will not stand before him. The liars will be destroyed. They will bear their guilt. They will fall by their own counsels. But He is a refuge for His faithful ones; and He will deliver, exalt, and be a shield for them. Let’s thank Him for that today. Amen.
